Draft-N Doesn't Play Nice

Wireless-G is far from dead, yet home networking vendors continue to build wireless-N devices running in the 2.4-GHz band, which can only hurt consumers.

If CES has taught me one thing, it's that Wireless-G is far from dead. According to spokespeople from both Netgear and Linksys, Wireless-G is still where the sweet sales balloon is floating. Consumers are still buying new Wireless-G products, and the vast majority of installed home wireless networks are still running at 802.11g. So, of course, all the networking vendors here in Vegas are pushing Wireless-N as hard as they can.

That's fine, except that all of PC Labs' Wi-Fi testing clearly shows that adding a Wireless-G client to a Wireless-N network absolutely monkey stomps performance (Wireless-N's 80- to 100-Mbps throughput drops down hard, sometimes into the 25- to 35-Mbps range). And those Wireless-G folks are down in the tweens or teens. Wireless-B usually crawls into the southern reaches of single digits, curls into the fetal position, and whimpers. Bottom line: Draft-N doesn't play nice with other Wi-Fi standards.

Of course, there's an easy way around this. Buy a dual-band N routersomething that runs in the 2.4 and 5 GHz bands at the same time. That way, you can relegate your Wireless-N traffic to 5 GHz where it's both faster and less prone to interference, while keeping your Wireless-B/G traffic at 2.4 GHz where it can run without hurting your expensive high-performance N traffic. There are several such routers available from all the big home networking vendors, including D-Link, Linksys, and Netgear.

Yet, both Linksys and Netgear released brand-spanking new Wireless-N routers at CES that run only in the 2.4 GHz spectrum. Linksys released the WRT310N and WRT160N, while Netgear's touting the RangeMax WNR3500. D-Link didn't release a new one, but it's still blithely selling the Xtreme N DIR-655, which also can't stretch above 2.4 GHz. At the same time, all three are pushing their vision of the connected homedigitized homes that stream music and HDTV content from room to room via wireless technology while the kids play LAN games, surf the Web, and make VoIP calls.

Yeah, but not even one of them is running a Wireless-G networking card. Try pushing HD content at Wireless-G speeds and you'll think you're watching a flipbook not a movie.

Related

What's really chapping my cheeks is that more than one home networking vendor has the solution. Netgear's new 5-GHz Wireless-N HD Access Point/Bridge, for example, is sold as a single AP or as a two-AP networking kit that will practically auto-configure. Just plug one of the APs into your existing 10/100 or 10/100/1000 router or switch, and you're instantly running a Wireless-N-only extension to your network in the 5-GHz band that'll seamlessly connect back to the rest of your network via the router. You don't even need to assign another subnet.

After all, if customers are still buying "G" like gangbusters, it stands to reason they'll have a Wireless-G router. So building all new routers that try and run Wireless-N in a band that's obviously dominated by G simply makes no sense. Yeah, we can argue that these vendors are just looking to sell more networking hardware, but even that argument doesn't hold water when you see the prices of these new routers. Netgear's new dual-band router is going to run around $129 (street) and the 5-Ghz Wireless-N access point will cost $129, while the 2.4-GHz-only WNR3500 is $159.

All those price points are comparable. So why push routers that are obviously going to dissatisfy consumers in the short-term? All I can guess is that engineering is once again being dominated by marketing. My CES advice for home networkers: Check out all of these new products, but if you're looking to run N in any form whatsoever, make sure it's running in the 5-GHz band only. And no matter how sexy a new router may look, if it doesn't say "5 GHz" or "dual-band" on the box, you need to bite your lip and wait until it does.